1876–1878: (Lesè Grennen: Boisrond-Canal’s Paralysis and the Politics of Color): The revolution that swept in Boisrond-Canal was the first triumph expressly …

1876–1878: (Lesè Grennen: Boisrond-Canal’s Paralysis and the Politics of Color): The revolution that swept in Boisrond-Canal was the first triumph expressly achieved in the name of the Liberal Party, but as usual the victors were in disarray. Paris-educated Boyer-Bazelais, Geffrard’s former aide and hero of the Ultra-Liberals, scoffed at Boisrond — a mere Liberal whose main school had been administering his large plantation at La Coupe — and reportedly tried to have him shot in Jacmel during the botched March 1876 landing. When Boisrond offered Bazelais the portfolios of Finance, Commerce, and Foreign Affairs, Bazelais would have all or nothing. Yet Boisrond had the votes: the election was the freest anyone could remember, with Bassett reporting that no previous Haitian election had approached such freedom of expression and choice. The American minister described the new president as a mulatto of about forty-four, handsome, erect, and personally very popular with all classes, though noting that neither he nor any man could in four years materially change the fixed habits of the people. Neither party had a program — as Dantès Bellegarde sadly observed, in Haiti a political program has no value save that of the man who proposes it, and Jean Price-Mars was more blunt: the color of one’s skin in this multi-pigmented country becomes a powerful and mysterious symbol that no one ever mentions officially but which is no less a force for association or repulsion. Frustrated at every turn by a hostile legislature, Boisrond adopted Pétion’s laisser-aller, and his habitual response became the Creole phrase Lesè Grennen — let the ripe fruit fall where it may. French minister de Vorges reported that nothing, absolutely nothing, had been done, while every project failed from political crisis, bureaucratic jealousy, or lack of practicality.